from the let-me-tell-you-a-story dept

It's funny, but despite the stories we occasionally write involving the classic roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons, some of which I've written myself, I've never actually played the game. Maybe that's why, according to the folks who have tried to ban the game, I'm not a satanic axe-wielding, uber-murderer. Who knows; could be possible. And, truth be told, outside of the more broadly-accepted video game habit I have, I've never delved into much of the so-called nerd gaming culture, other than being completely addicted to Wil Wheaton's Table Top YouTube series. And, despite all of the historical controversy over these kinds of games, I really wish I'd gotten into them more now that some literary authors are claiming what a huge influence D&D-style games have had on their abilities as story-tellers.

For certain writers, especially those raised in the 1970s and '80s, all that time spent in basements has paid off. D&D helped jump-start their creative lives. As [writer Junot] Díaz said, "It's been a formative narrative media for all sorts of writers."

The league of ex-gamer writers also includes the "weird fiction" author China Miéville ("The City & the City"); Brent Hartinger (author of "Geography Club," a novel about gay and bisexual teenagers); the sci-fi and young adult author Cory Doctorow; the poet and fiction writer Sherman Alexie; the comedian Stephen Colbert; George R. R. Martin, author of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series (who still enjoys role-playing games). Others who have been influenced are television and film storytellers and entertainers like Robin Williams, Matt Groening ("The Simpsons"), Dan Harmon ("Community") and Chris Weitz ("American Pie").

It's an impressive list, but it also makes a certain kind of sense. There's a certain sandbox-esque element to creating a low-tech story-based gaming environment centered around roleplaying with friends. As someone who has written fiction, I can tell you that one of the most important aspects of telling a story is being able to get inside the heads of the characters in your tale. That's essentially roleplaying, no matter how you look at it. The other half of the story equation is the setting, which is something roleplaying players also must engage in creatively.

The Dungeon Master must create a believable world with a back story, adventures the players might encounter and options for plot twists. That requires skills as varied as a theater director, researcher and psychologist — all traits integral to writing. (Mr. Díaz said his boyhood gaming group was "more like an improv group with some dice.")

Sharyn McCrumb, 66, who writes the Ballad Novels series set in Appalachia, was similarly influenced, and in her comic novel "Bimbos of the Death Sun" D&D even helps solve a murder.

"I always, always wanted to be the Dungeon Master because that's where the creativity lies — in thinking up places, characters and situations," Ms. McCrumb said. "If done well, a game can be a novel in itself."

Now, some of this might read like an advertisement for pen-and-paper or tabletop games as a creativity booster such that the modern-day video games can't match, but that's almost certainly a mistake. You can make that argument against some of the mindless games out there, but you could do likewise with poorly constructed D&D games as set up by the people playing them. As games become more story-driven, as they are able to portray plot and characters with more granularity than ever before, and as player choice becomes interwoven into the story, the player is creating their own story to some degree, just like they do in a classic roleplaying game.

The larger lesson, of course, is that all the moral panics we hear tend to focus on an overblown fear and ignore any net-positive that might exist. Generations of speculative fiction authors and other creative folks were influenced positively by Dungeons & Dragons, despite the fervor by some against the games themselves. I'd lay money down that we'll hear similar stories about modern-day gaming as well.

from the not-mine dept

One of the concerns we have about the US Copyright Office is that the staff there often seem entirely out of touch with the world we live in today. Witness, for example, its description of the Authors Guild in a recent announcement about an event they're hosting celebrating the Authors Guild 100th anniversary:

The Copyright Office is pleased to host a Copyright Matters discussion about the history and future of the professional author on December 11 at 3 p.m. in the Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress. The event, occurring on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of The Authors Guild, the nation's leading advocate for writers' interests, will feature Guild president, author Scott Turow, as the keynote speaker. Other speakers include author and past Guild president Robert K. Massie; John Y. Cole of the Library's Center for the Book; and book market analyst Peter Hildick-Smith of the Codex Group. Also present will be guest authors Roy Blount, Jr., Katherine Neville, Mary Pope Osbourne, Nick Taylor, and others. The event is free and open to the public. See www.copyright.gov/copyrightmatters.html.

Except, of course, that's not even close to true. The Authors Guild represents a very tiny sliver of "writers." It currently has about 9,000 members, and famously only realized that self-published authors count as authors... a few months ago. Look, if copyright only covered works that were officially registered with the Copyright Office, perhaps they'd have a point in claiming that the AG represents writers. But that's silly. Due to ridiculous expansion of copyright laws in the US and around the globe (much of which the Copyright Office gleefully supported), everything that people write that has even a tiny modicum of new/creative elements is automatically covered by copyright. That includes the email you just sent and the scribble your toddler just drew on a piece of paper.

Somehow, I don't see the Authors Guild watching out for those "writers" interests.

What about me? I make my living writing -- but I see the Authors Guild as an out of touch organization run by luddites working hard to limit and hinder innovation because they're confused and scared of technology -- mainly how it creates more competition for their special club which doesn't want too many members. This is the same organization that argued that having a legally purchased ebooks read aloud violated their copyrights. The same organization that has sued libraries for scanning books to make them available for people to read in digital form. The same Authors Guild who has argued that the future of books is... brick and mortar stores. The same Authors Guild who (seriously) argued that Shakespeare wouldn't survive in the modern era since no one respects copyright any more (ignoring that there was no copyright in Shakespeare's time, and he did okay).

The Authors Guild isn't representing 99.999% of all "writers." And it certainly doesn't seem to be advocating for writers' interests, considering that it's fought against some of the best new technologies for creating, distributing, promoting and monetizing writers' works today.

Of course, we know what this is really about. The Copyright Office is still living in a time in the past, where it gets to fetishize a small cadre and closed off "club" of top professionals, ignoring that the rules and laws they seek to pass to protect that club against innovation and competition, also have massive negative impacts on the vast majority of content creators who aren't members of that tiny club. The Authors Guild may do wonderful things for a small group of authors who don't want to change with the times, but I don't see how that's a particularly beneficial service. It seems like a mistake. And the Copyright Office celebrates this?

from the new-models dept

As the eBook experience improves, especially with the increased adoption of the Kindle and iPad, authors now have the same opportunity that exists now for musicians to exploit new opportunities. Like the music world, most writers also don't expect to make a great living from writing, so for them, exposure to readers is more valuable than revenue:

If you give a writer a choice between $10,000 and 10,000 readers, the writer will always choose the latter.

After all, having 10,000 readers is a fantastic connection with which to work -- at that point, all an author would have to do to make money would be to give the readers a reason to buy. For writers, there's already a fantastic finite good that they can sell, the printed book. While this may seem counter-intuitive, we've seen this model work before: after a publisher gave away digital copies of a book for free, they saw their physical book sales increase 20x. So, like the musicians who embrace the opportunities that the new economy offers, writers have a similar entrepreneurial opportunity.

from the using-infinite-goods... dept

When we talk about understanding how to embrace the economics of infinite goods, one of the key points I've tried to make is that every product is a bundle of scarce and infinite goods. That's a point that some people have a lot of trouble with at times, insisting that some people who create infinite goods have no scarcities to sell... and, conversely, that those who make scarce goods, sometimes have no infinite goods to give away with them. While it may be a bit more complicated to separate out the scarce and infinite goods, it doesn't mean they don't exist.

Again, some will incorrectly claim that we're saying that fiction writers should start selling crap on eBay, but that's not it at all. This is just one (fun) example of many of content creators smartly using infinite goods (the stories) to make a scarce good (the trinket) more valuable, and putting in place a business model to profit from it. Once again, we learn that creativity knows no bounds, not just in creating content, but in playing around with new business models.

from the this-won't-end-well dept

While I have no doubt that the movie studios are being sleazy and underhanded in how it deals with both writers and actors concerning various contracts, it still seemed like both movie and TV writers were making a big mistake in demanding residuals for internet usage. All that does is make it more difficult to get that content online. And, of course, it meant that actors were going to fight for the same thing.

Now, just as the studios and actors had their negotiations breakdown, the Writers' Guild is claiming that producers are not living up to their end of the deal struck earlier this year. The writers claim that they're not getting the promised residuals, and the producers seem to be disputing which content is covered by the agreement. The writers say that all modern content from the past few decades is covered, while producers say the agreement only covers content made after February 13th of this year -- the date of the settlement.

To be honest, the whole dispute is rather silly. Any such system of royalties is going to break down. It may have worked in the past, but it's based on that same old concept of artificial scarcity that makes it more difficult to adapt to the modern economic reality of digital content. By insisting that the studios have to pay residuals on content reused on the internet (effectively getting writers and actors paid multiple times for the same work), it just solidifies the barriers for the folks who employ those writers and actors to adapt to the modern economic and technological reality. The writers and actors are just harming themselves by making it harder for studios to move into the internet era, adding tremendous additional costs beyond what was already paid for.

from the risky-business dept

The LA Times reports on ongoing negotiations between writers and venture capitalists to create Hollywood startups. Apparently "dozens" of Hollywood writers are looking to launch companies that would allow them to produce video content that would be distributed directly to fans on the web. We've noted that there are already a number of companies pursuing this strategy, and with thousands of talented writers sitting idle, this is an ideal time to start more of them. In the long run, these kinds of startups will ensure writers get compensated fairly because it will give writers who feel they're under-compensated an exit option. On the other hand, the LA Times makes clear that writers jumping into alternative business models may find that the reality of Hollywood startups to be a culture shock. A lot of successful online content outfits tend to be shoestring operations, and it's likely to take a few more years before the bulk of viewers make the switch to Internet-based sources of information. Writers used to the relatively large budgets and large audiences of Hollywood studios may find it difficult to adjust to being at a web startup that no one has (yet) heard of. This may explain why in a town with ten thousand writers, only "dozens" are looking at the startup option. On the other hand, those writers with an appetite for risk or a thirst for creative control may thrive in an environment where they call the shots and reap a much larger share of the rewards if they succeed.

from the had-to-happen-at-some-point dept

Michael Geist points us to the news that Access Copyright, an organization representing approximately 9,000 Canadian publishers and writers has sued Staples/Business Depot for copyright infringement over photocopying done at the stores in Canada. They're asking for $10 million, which Geist notes is "the largest lawsuit ever launched over copyright infringement of published works in Canada." For photocopying books in stores? Are book publishers really worried about the photocopier menace? Hopefully there's more to this claim than just the fact that people can photocopy passages from a book at Staples. It's pretty difficult to believe that this practice is widespread enough to cause any serious harm to publishers or writers. If it's just about people copying an occasional passage, as Geist notes, a previous lawsuit against libraries had found that the libraries weren't responsible and that "fair dealing" (similar to fair use in the states) shouldn't be constrained. Sure, if Staples were somehow copying books and selling the photocopies out the back you could make an argument that it's an issue, but if people are just using the photocopier in the store to copy parts of a book for personal reasons, it's hard to see the rationale here.

from the funny-how-that-works-out dept

One of the things that has always been part of the problem with the entertainment industry's business model is the idea that any time any of its content is used for anything, the industry needs to get paid. Most of the rest of the world works in a work-for-hire world. You get paid to do a job and then you're done. The factory worker gets his salary and doesn't make extra royalties every time one of the widgets he builds is sold or resold. Otherwise, you get weird situations with people whining that they need to keep getting paid for work they did 50 years ago. Of course, if you're from the entertainment industry (and I can already hear you readying your replies), you insist that this is how it must be done -- despite plenty of evidence that it need not be done this way (and that doing it that way can limit the potential market for the content). Apparently, however, the movie studios disagree with you. Well, partly. They agree that's how it must be done when they're getting paid money. So every time a movie is being shown or sold, you better believe the studios want their cut. However, the studios feels quite differently when they have to pay money out. That's why they're trying to negotiate residuals out of the new writers' contract. That's right. Suddenly, the movie industry that insists it must get paid for every possible use of a movie, doesn't think it makes sense to pay the writer after the initial set fee for writing the movie. It actually makes much more economic sense for the writers to be paid a straight fee with no residuals -- but it's a bit hypocritical for the Hollywood studios to claim it makes sense when it benefits them and doesn't when it costs them.